ghed aloud.

"Just so! You are a woman, and like all the rest. You are sweet and
gentle only so long as you have your own way."

"No, indeed," cried Melissa, and her eyes filled with tears. "I only look
further than from one hour to the next. If I should sacrifice what I
think right, merely to come and go at my own will, I should soon be not
only miserable myself, but the object of your contempt."

Overcome by irresistible distress, she broke into loud sobs; but
Caracalla, with a furious stamp of his foot, exclaimed:

"No tears! I can not, I will not see you weep. Can any harm come to you?
Nothing but good; nothing but the best of happiness do I propose for you.
By Apollo and Zeus, that is the truth! Till now you have been unlike
other women, but when you behave like them, you shall--I swear it--you
shall feel which of us two is the stronger!"

He roughly snatched her hand away from her face and thereby achieved his
end, for her indignation at being thus touched by a man's brutal hand
gave Melissa strength to suppress her sobs. Only her wet cheeks showed
what a flood of tears she had shed, as, almost beside herself with anger,
she exclaimed:

"Let my hand go! Shame on the man who insults a defenseless girl! You
swear! Then I, too, may take an oath, and, by the head of my mother, you
shall never see me again excepting as a corpse, if you ever attempt
violence! You are Caesar--you are the stronger. Who ever doubted it? But
you will never compel me to a vile action, not if you could inflict a
thousand deaths on me instead of one!"

Caracalla, without a word, had released her hand and was staring at her
in amazement.

A woman, and so gentle a woman, defying him as no man would have dared to
do!

She stood before him, her hand raised, her bosom heaving; a flame of
anger sparkled in her eyes through their tears, and he had never before
thought her so fair. What majesty there was in this girl, whose simple
grace had made him more than once address her as "child"! She was like a
queen, an empress; perhaps she might become one. The idea struck him for
the first time. And that little hand which now fell--what soothing power
it had, how much he owed to it! How fervently he had wished but just now
to be understood by her, and to be thought better of by her than by the
rest! And this wish still possessed him. Nay, he was more strongly
attracted than ever to this creature, worthy as she was of the highest in
the land, and